As an ever increasing amount of information about a wide variety of items become available electronically, such as from a retailer or provider over the Internet, it becomes increasingly difficult to compare and research the various items. For example, a user or customer looking to purchase a suitable toy for a toddler might want to know the ages for which various toys are appropriate. Oftentimes, a site will have one or more pictures of a toy, as well as specifications and details provided by the manufacturer or retailer of the toy. Such information is typically very objective, including information such as the dimensions and weight of the toy, but does not really give the customer a good feel for whether the toy is appropriate for a toddler, as well as whether the toy is durable or educational, etc.
In order to obtain more information about the toy, the user might use a search engine to attempt to locate reviews or other information about the toy(s) on other sites. This is a time-consuming process for the customer, and is undesirable to the retailer selling the toy because the customer is leaving the retailer site in order to obtain additional information, and might eventually purchase the toy elsewhere as a result. Further, there are thousands upon thousands of toys available, and often there is not a lot of information available for any given toy.
Various retailer sites have attempted to solve such problems by providing various forms of feedback and opinion-related options to its users. In some cases, a retailer might hire reviewers to provide reviews for certain items. This approach is costly to the retailer, and only provides a limited amount of additional information as it is limited to one person's perspective on each selected item. Many sites allow users to submit reviews for various items. These user reviews can provide a wealth of information, but can be unwieldy to parse through such that it can be difficult for a user to locate information of the type that is of interest for the user.